Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb, Department of Romance Languages, Department of Italian, Department of English
Abstract
The aim of this study was to analyse the words of foreign origin that have entered
the Croatian language and that are used within the domain of kinesiology, the science
of human movement. The sample consisted of 659 technical terms that were
ultimately categorised into eight categories: terms of English, French, Latin, Italian,
German and Greek origin, and the categories proper names and other languages. The allocation
of terms per category was expressed both in frequency distributions and in
percentages. It is evident that the terms of English origin were the most frequent ones
(26.6%), as well as proper names (26.6%), followed by the terms from French (10.9%),
Latin (9.5%) and Italian (9%). There are some technical terms that are borrowings for
which there are no originally Croatian translation equivalents, and for a number of
them such equivalents might never be found. However, it is possible to find Croatian
counterparts for the other terms of foreign origin which could appropriately denote
the concepts in question.
In the end, it is also concluded that the international nature of kinesiological vocabulary
helps in developing communicative competence in Croatian sportsmen when using
English as a foreign language
